The Teoma Meme Miner

The Meme Miner is worth your perusal. The use for such a thing is to see the current state of buzz for a particular topic. That is, you can see what is up and what is down, and when it started to move down in buzz level. An example of something on the way up, in buzz level, is Google's service Frappr, which I recently setup for this blog. Here is the Frappr graph:

Wretchard has an interesting post called "NetWar"

Wretchard, writing at the Belmont Club, has an interesting post about "NetWar", where hierarchical organizations and even nations are outmaneuvered by networked organizations that operate under looser and more decentralized control. He says that the trend is away from the "one world government" and towards these new structures.

One of the coolest posts I've read in a long time is Chester's Globalization and War. His reference links to Philip Bobbitt's The Shield of Achilles and the really nifty eMachineShop alone are worth the read. The fundamental issue he discusses is whether nation-states are in some sense being replaced by distributed networks of people. Many activities, from community building to earning a living have jumped over traditional boundaries. Criminal and terrorist organizations have been among the first to exploit this fact. Viewed from one angle, modern Islamic terrorist cells are not so much a return to the forms of the 8th century as new structures made possible by 21st century technologies.

I signed up for Frappr after seeing Rob Port's map

I was an early signup for Rob Port's map at the Say Anything blog. I finally decided to have a Frappr map for this blog and signed up. If you feel adventurous, add yourself to the map. I thought that the Frappr map was a fun thing to have.

Jonathan Schell looking at a wavy mirror: The Fall of the One-Party Empire

Jonathan Schell, writing at The Nation, sees this Administration and the Republican Party reflected in a wavy mirror. He is reveling in the damage that the MSM story line has done, as well as the collapse of the Republican majority due to the liberal Republicans "acting up". Jonathan Schell can only see bad, as he seems to have been a poor loser and now is showing elation at the Republican problems. I don't want to do anything but talk about what he wrote, rather than giving excerpts. He basically says that the Republican goal was to have one-party rule in the US and the US would rule the world, as a new Roman Empire. He sees the one-party rule in shambles and sees the world rule as a fantasy. My take is that his whole story line is a leftist fantasy. What we are seeing right now may well be the start of a major political realignment, along different lines from what he have previously known. I would not be surprised to have us move towards multi-party politics, rather than just the traditional two parties. As I have previously noted, the political fabric is starting to fracture along new lines.

Marc Cooper has a good piece about "The Two Fundamentalisms"

Marc Cooper has a really good piece called "The Two Fundamentalisms". Marc starts by writing:

Shortly after 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, lefty Brit writer Tariq Ali produced a book that posited a "Clash of Fundamentalisms:" a growing battle between Al Qaeda’s Islamic purists and George W. Bush’s Christian primitives.

Ali’s was a nice gimmick. But it missed the broader point that is coming to define our own political debate and policy options. Twin fundamentalisms, indeed. But a juxtaposition between a Conservative Right that sees the worlds in a primitive, two-dimensional fashion. And a Western Left that is equally myopic.

This theory is ably spun out by Lebanese writer Hazem Saghieh, a senior commentator for the London-based Arabic paper Al-Hayat. Writing on the Soros-backed Open Democracy site, Saghieh takes us back to the 1960’s when it was in vogue to quote Chairman Mao on the dominance of "the principal contradiction" to which he said, all other questions were merely secondary. In the simplistic formula of Mao, this primary contradiction resided between U.S. Imperialism and The Peoples of the World and everything else was pretty much beside the point. Saghieh argues that while this expedient nostrum has faded in the East — with the Chinese more focused now on managing capitalist sweatshops rather than defending socialist ideological purity– this mancihean view has nevertheless been adopted by sectors of both the Western Right and Left.

Marc concludes:

This is truly incisive, frank and out-of-the box theorizing. It takes the simile of the "shoe on the other foot" to an elevated and enlightening level of political theory. We are moving ever away from the values of the enlightenment and perilously close to a situation in which partisans are no longer willing to hold two thoughts in their head at the same time. Instead, everything is reduced to a simple zero-sum formula: Saddam’s torture was evil but our torture isn’t torture. Israelis firing missiles at Palestinian cars is a war crime but Palestinian suicide bombers are merely frustrated youth. Globalization is a destructive process when it shreds American jobs and is unrecognized as a stimulus for Indian employment. American troops kill civilians in Iraq but Iraqi car bombers who target public schools would disappear if those troops retreated.

It’s a dark legacy the Great Helmsman has left to the rest of us.

Greg Cositkyan on "Zimmernan's Bill of Rights" for game developers

Greg Costikyan analyzes Zimmerman's Bill of Rights for game developers. Greg has relatively recently launched Manifesto Games, and he has an interest in things like this. He also has his own opinions that don't always align with what has been suggested. Greg says:

So Eric the Z has posted his Game Developer's Bill of Rights on Gamasutra; it's modelled on Scott McCloud's similar screed for comic creators. I thought I'd go through it and comment.

Greg's summary asssessment says:

But by and large, it sounds right to me. Not that EA is going to announce they're adopting it. But I think Manifesto will pretty much adhere to it.

Politics in the US is ripe for realignment

The last 6 months, if not longer, has seen a fracturing in the fabric of the political parties in the US. I don't see how two parties can realistically represent the various factions. We can list some of the categories and options:

Religion:
   # closely aligned with Evangelical Christianity
   # attend church but are not conservative Christians
   # Other religions than Christianity
       (Jewish-liberal or conservative),
      Islam, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, etc.
   # Atheists who actively attack Christianity
Abortion:
   # Strongly pro-abortion with no restrictions allowed
   # willing to accept some restrictions
Homosexuality:
   # Accepting of homosexuality and almost promote it
   # Accepting of homosexuality, but have reservations
   # Accept homosexuality, but don't want it to be visible
   #Opposed to homosexuality
   (there may be more options)
Immigration:
   # Open borders
   # Easy immigration with restrictions
   # Closed borders
   (other options?)
Government size:
   # Anarchists on the right and left want there to be none
   # Small government conservatives
   # Big government (conservative or liberal)
Government Spending (closely related to size)
   # fiscal conservatives
   # spend money to buy votes (left or right)
                 (congress or people)
   # invest in people by subsidizing them
   # Socialists
Economics:
   # "pro-growth" (in the sense of Lawrence Kudlow)
   # want less regulation
   # want more business regulation
   # anti-business
   # Socialists
Taxes:
   # Want as little tax as possible
   # Want a flat tax
   # Want some other system that does not tax success
   # Tweak the present system to increase "fairness" (whatever that is)
   # Tax the rich to give to the poor (take everything, if you can)
Guns:
   # no restrictions on guns
   # concealed carry with registration
   # restricted access to guns
   # take away all guns and sue the gunmakers
War against Islamic fascism
   # carry the war to the enemy overseas
   # Consult with the Europeans before taking action
   # We shouldn't fight back, as war is bad
   # We did something to cause us to be attacked

I could seem alignment along lines like this:

• Left
• Center-left
• Center-right
• Right

Beldar is like Bulgaria after the Balkan War in 1911 or so

Winston Churchill, in Vol.I of The World Crisis (1923) wrote of Bulgaria, after being beaten in the Balkan War: "brooding over what seemed to be intolerable wrongs" seems to describe Beldar in hiatus. Beldar has been silent after the Harriet Miers debacle, in which he had invested considerable capital.

Another bogus crime: holocaust denial

Do we believe in free speech or what? I guess if your speech is considered offensive, you can be tried a criminal. David Irving's "holocaust denial", however misguided and wrong, can't be a crime for which you can be jailed, not in any country. There is a news piece on this craziness, which is pretty widespread. Am I missing something?

"Illegal websites"

My broadband provider sent me email about a virus that is sent by an email, supposedly from the FBI or CIA, saying that they know that you have been visiting "illegal websites". Obviously, if you do not have adequate anti-virus protection and you actually get the attachment, you should not open it. What caught my attention was the use of "illegal websites". I can believe that there are such a thing, by US law, but it seems a lot like living in Iran or China for such a thing to exist. So much for the constitution, individual rights, and free speech. Most are probably gay paedophile, so I am sympathetic to suppressing those in particular, but in general the concept of having "illegal websites" is problematic. (just like the Soviet Union, we have "prohibited" material) What will be banned next: anti-war criticism of the war on terror, pro-Christian speech, or speech critical of Islam?